Any time you partition your disk, you should be prepared to lose everything on the disk should you make a mistake or something goes wrong during partitioning. The programs used in installation are quite reliable, most have seen years of use, but they also perform destructive actions.

The basic steps to install Ubuntu Server Edition from CD are the same for installing any operating system from CD. Unlike the <emphasis>Desktop Edition</emphasis> the <emphasis>Server Edition</emphasis> does not include a graphical installation program. Instead the Server Edition uses a console menu based process.

If at any point during installation you are not satisfied by the default setting, use the "Go Back" function at any prompt to be brought to a detailed installation menu that will allow you to modify the default settings.

The output will list tasks from other Ubuntu based distributions such as Kubuntu and Edubuntu. Note that you can also invoke the <command>tasksel</command> command by itself, which will bring up a menu of the different tasks available.

You can view a list of which packages are installed with each task using the <emphasis>--task-packages</emphasis> option. For example, to list the packages installed with the <emphasis>DNS Server</emphasis> task enter the following:

Also, if you did not install one of the tasks during the installation process, but for example you decide to make your new LAMP server a DNS server as well. Simply insert the installation CD and from a terminal:

The recommended way to upgrade a Server Edition installation is to use the <application>do-release-upgrade</application> utility. Part of the <emphasis>update-manager-core</emphasis> package, it does not have any graphical dependencies and is installed by default.

Debian based systems can also be upgraded by using <command>apt-get dist-upgrade</command>. However, using <application>do-release-upgrade</application> is recommended because it has the ability to handle system configuration changes sometimes needed between releases.

You can edit the vsftpd configuration file, <filename>/etc/vsftpd.conf</filename>, to change the default settings. By default only anonymous FTP is allowed. If you wish to disable this option, you should change the following line:

The configuration file consists of many configuration parameters. The information about each parameter is available in the configuration file. Alternatively, you can refer to the man page, <command>man 5 vsftpd.conf</command> for details of each parameter.

Now that we can connect to our <application>PostgreSQL</application> server, the next step is to set a password for the <emphasis>postgres</emphasis> user. Run the following command at a terminal prompt to connect to the default PostgreSQL template database:

One of the simplest ways to backup a system is using a <emphasis>shell script</emphasis>. For example, a script can be used to configure which directories to backup, and use those directories as arguments to the <application>tar</application> utility creating an archive file. The archive file can then be moved or copied to another location. The archive can also be created on a remote file system such as an <emphasis>NFS</emphasis> mount.